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American hackers of tomorrow?’ he asks from his exile in Amsterdam. The US computer industry, he says, will be the poorer for not having young hackers; the country will lose its lead in software design as it did in computer hardware manufacturing.

When the computer underworld was new, back in the happier days in the 1960s, phreakers like Bill who could work the systems were pretty much immune to busts by telco security agents or the Feds. There wasn’t as much hysteria about it then either, he says.

He was a friend of John Draper back in the old days too. Draper, as Captain Crunch, was the real father of the computer underworld, the man who had explored switches before anyone else knew what they were, who could line up tandems across the country, who could bounce his voice around the world and back again. Even the new kids, the Cyberpunks, have heard of Captain Crunch. They may not realize he’s still alive, but they know the legend. It was the Captain who first recognized that Ma Bell was really Cyberspace. ‘The telephone system is just a computer,’ he said — and most of the new generation of hackers still remember that.

Bill Squire still keeps in touch with Draper and other friends in California courtesy of the PTT, the Dutch telephone company. A call to Draper in Alameda, California, involves him phreaking his way into Brazil, then up to Mexico, then by satellite into the US. If he wants to call the UK, he goes in through Greece. There’s always a way. He can set up three-way calls with California and the UK from his apartment in Bijlmeer, in south east Amsterdam.

Hackers in the States are now so paranoid that they don’t call him, Bill complains. He’s always got to call them: it’s not very friendly. Even Draper doesn’t phreak anymore; he’s so paranoid that he won’t even joke about it. ‘Hey, John, guess what? I’m whistling this call!’ makes him shout: ‘I don’t wanna know!’

Draper is convinced his line is being monitored. In fact he believes National Security agents regularly listen in on telephone calls, looking for key words and taping suspicious conversations. He doesn’t mean some calls, or just those routed to what was the Soviet Union. He means all calls, all half billion or so a day. ‘Otherwise why does the NSA need half the nation’s Cray computers?’ he asks darkly. (The Crays are the fastest and most powerful supercomputers in the world.)

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